The Digital Workplace: Organisational Metadata and Recordkeeping 6 June 2007 Noni Oldfield

Disclaimer This is my Personal opinion only It is not the official view of Inland Revenue or other members of the Records and Document Management Team at Inland Revenue I am not an academic – I don’t always keep track of where the information that informs my knowledge comes from!

So you are newly arrived at … You know what you want Lots of information neatly organised, easily accessible, and busily being used

But a quick look around reveals … The “records” are just piled up and most aren’t being used because they can’t be found. You are sure that there is a lot of duplication too. You dig deeper and unwittingly reveal …

This!

Metadata ALREADY exists in the organisation … lots of it! Organisational metadata is kept in silos – each different from the rest Most information is not considered to be “a record”. It is not standardised across the organisation, but some parts use external standards, such as NZGLS, MARC, and XBRL.

Standardising organisational metadata The need to standardise metadata is known Has been known by the Library and Records professions for more than 50 years Has been known by IT departments since the 1970’s Has been known by Senior Management only recently and reluctantly

What have organisations done about standardising metadata? Data warehouses – 1970s Metadata repositories and standards – 1980s-1990s Metadata models and architectures – 1990s-2000s XML languages built-in to databases and the web – 2000s Is it fixed? No its not.

What are our problems? 1.Organisations still can’t manage all their metadata

How do Records fit in to this? Most organisations think of “records” as “unstructured information” –Shared drives –Personal drives – system –File cabinets –CD-ROMs –Plans –Etc

To the organisation Recordkeeping metadata is just another silo It is applied to unstructured information only It is generic and only has a loose connection with the business of the organisation That business connection is via “functions” and “activities” (i.e. tied in with business processes – which are usually not very well documented either).

So what about unstructured information? This is the biggest chunk of information without good metadata in most cases.

If you are lucky … … this kind of information is already being captured into an electronic document and records management system (eDRMS). –This almost certainly won’t use the same metadata definitions as the transactional information –It may (or may not) conform to existing recordkeeping metadata standards

But probably … … it is not. You are limited to the metadata that your software can add. –The operating software and the office software can both add metadata automatically. –If it is not configured properly, then much of this automatic metadata is meaningless. –Recordkeeping metadata standards assume far more metadata can be easily added than is actually the case.

What about recordkeeping metadata standards? These are most useful for specifying the functionality for new eDRM systems Existing systems are better evaluated against ISO to see if they meet the requirements

What are our problems? 1.Organisations still can’t manage all their metadata 2.Records are perceived to be just another silo

So what is recordkeeping? PRA 2005 definition covers too much. Recordkeeping should be about keeping records, not about keeping everything. -There is too much information now to keep everything (just in case) -The recordkeeping profession is getting swamped by waves of new kinds of information -Not all information should be treated in the same way

Recordkeeping is facing waves of information – the first wave World wide web – the second wave Dynamic, intelligent, data (data wrapped in its own definitions – data from applications and data wrapped in XML language tags) – the current wave Non-written records (phone calls, video surveillance, etc) – the approaching wave Ubiquitous computing – the distant wave

Tsunami

Recordkeeping needs to go back to its’ roots Define classes of information that ARE records Use appraisal to find the information we need to keep and make it very easy to discard the rest Train our end-users to create summaries of their conversations (file notes, minutes, etc) and keep those instead of keeping the “raw data” – i.e. everything.

What are our problems? Organisations still can’t manage all their metadata 2.Records are perceived to be just another silo 3.Recordkeeping is being drowned in too much information

Of course, for every problem there is an opportunity …

Opportunity 1 – The metadata solution Let Records take over all the metadata management for the organisation – business metadata included. A business owner of the big picture is badly needed (and no-one else really wants it). Centralisation/standardisation of metadata is useful for the whole organisation and enables better records to be kept Needs to be done in conjunction with other metadata custodians in the organisation.

Opportunity 2 –Metadata standards Let us create recordkeeping metadata standards at different levels 1.A simple standard, like Dublin Core, for people who don’t have an eDRMS 2.An XML-based language that allows interchange of standard recordkeeping metadata anywhere in the world 3.Get everyone using the same standard for eDRMS – possibly based on ISO

Opportunity 3 – Back to the future Let us define the “records” we want to keep, instead of defining those that we can discard. Let us really push to create summaries (records) of information instead of keeping all the data. If we can’t do that, then we must define an automatic (or at least really easy) process to allow people to discard/delete information such as s.

Opportunity 4 – the ECM solution If we are going to treat all information as records then we must manage all information. This is too important to be left to anyone else. –This is a trend in the USA, driven by e-Discovery –It could happen here too –Forget “records”, treat everything as content and manage the whole lifecycle We will still need an easy way to delete unwanted information!

The Good News … The only way to go is up! And metadata may be the way to go